K
K | |
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K k | |
Other | |
Other letters commonly used with | k(x) |
Writing direction | Left-to-Right |
ISO basic Latin alphabet |
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AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz |
K, or k, is the eleventh letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is kay (pronounced /ˈkeɪ/), plural kays.[1]
The letter K usually represents the voiceless velar plosive.
History
Egyptian hieroglyph D |
Proto-Sinaitic K |
Proto-Canaanite kap |
Phoenician kaph |
Western Greek Kappa |
Etruscan K |
Latin K | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
The letter K comes from the
K was brought into the Latin alphabet with the name ka /kaː/ to differentiate it from C, named ce (pronounced /keː/) and Q, named qu and pronounced /kuː/. In the earliest Latin inscriptions, the letters C, K and Q were all used to represent the sounds /k/ and /ɡ/ (which were not differentiated in writing). Of these, Q was used before a rounded vowel (e.g. ⟨EQO⟩ 'ego'), K before /a/ (e.g. ⟨KALENDIS⟩ 'calendis'), and C elsewhere. Later, the use of C and its variant G replaced most usages of K and Q. K survived only in a few fossilized forms such as Kalendae, "the calends".[4]
After Greek words were taken into Latin, the Kappa was transliterated as a C. Loanwords from other alphabets with the sound /k/ were also transliterated with C. Hence, the Romance languages generally use C, in imitating Classical Latin's practice, and have K only in later loanwords from other language groups. The Celtic languages also tended to use C instead of K, and this influence carried over into Old English.
Use in writing systems
Orthography | Phonemes | Environment |
---|---|---|
Standard Chinese (Pinyin) | /kʰ/ | |
English | /k/, silent | |
Esperanto | /k/ | |
Faroese | /k/ | |
/tʃʰ/ | Before ⟨e⟩ (except ⟨ei⟩), ⟨i⟩, and ⟨j⟩ | |
German | /k/ | |
Ancient Greek romanization | /k/ | |
Modern Greek romanization | /k/ | Except before /e, i/ |
/c/ | Before /e, i/ | |
Icelandic | /kʰ/, /cʰ/, /k/, /c/, /ʰk/, /x/ | |
Norwegian | /k/ | Except before ⟨i⟩ or ⟨y⟩ |
/ç/ | Before ⟨i⟩ or ⟨y⟩ | |
Swedish | /k/ | |
/ɕ/ | Before ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨y⟩, ⟨y⟩, ⟨ä⟩, ⟨ö⟩ | |
Turkish | /k/ | Except before ⟨â⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨ö⟩, ⟨û⟩, ⟨ü⟩ |
/c/ | Before ⟨â⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨ö⟩, ⟨û⟩, ⟨ü⟩ |
English
The letter usually represents /k/ in English. It is silent when it comes before ⟨n⟩ at the start of a stem, e.g.:
- At the start of a word (knight, knife, knot, know, and knee)
- After a prefix (unknowable)
- In compounds (penknife)
English is now the only
Like J, X, Q, and Z, the letter K is not used very frequently in English. It is the fifth least frequently used letter in the English language, with a frequency in words of about 0.8%.
Other languages
In most languages where it is employed, this letter represents the sound /
The Latinization of Modern Greek also uses this letter for /k/. However, before the front vowels /e, i/ this is rendered as [c], which can be considered a separate phoneme.
Other systems
The International Phonetic Alphabet uses ⟨k⟩ for the voiceless velar plosive.
Other uses
- In the SI prefixfor one thousand is kilo-, officially abbreviated as k: for example, prefixed to metre/meter or its abbreviation m, kilometre or km signifies a thousand metres. As such, people occasionally represent numbers in a non-standard notation by replacing the last three zeros of the general numeral with K, as in 30K for 30,000.
- "K" replacing "C" in satiric misspelling.
- K is the unit symbol for the kelvin, used to measure thermodynamic temperature (note: degree sign is not used with this symbol).
- K is the chemical symbol for element potassium (from its Latin name kalium).
- Triangle K.
- Josef K is the name of the principal character in Franz Kafka's novel The Trial.
- In chess notation, the letter K represents the King (WK for White King, BK for Black King).
- In baseball scoring, the letter K is used to represent a strikeout. A forwards oriented K represents a "strikeout swinging"; a backwards oriented K () represents a "strikeout looking".
- As abbreviation for OK, often used in emails and short text messages.
- K is used as a slang term for Ketamine among recreational drug users.
- In the CMYK color model, K represents black ink.
- In over".[5]
- In fracture mechanics, K is used to represent the stress intensity factor.
- In physics, k usually stands for the Boltzmann constant.
- In Argentinian politics, K is used as a symbol for Kirchnerism
- K (logic).
- K is used colloquially to mean kilometre (as in "a 10K run").
- K is used to indicate thousands, especially when expressing amounts of money, e.g. $20K = twenty thousand dollars.
- In the United Kingdom under the old system (before 2001), a licence plate that begins with "K" for example "K123 XYZ" would correspond to a vehicle registered between August 1, 1992, and July 31, 1993. Again under the old system, a licence plate that ends with "K" for example "ABC 123K" would correspond to a vehicle that was registered between August 1, 1971, and July 31, 1972.
- On Kootenai County.
Related characters
Ancestors, descendants and siblings
- 𐤊 : Semitic letter Kaph, from which the following symbols originally derive
- Κ κ/ϰ : Greek letter Kappa, from which K derives
- К к : Cyrillic letter Ka, also derived from Kappa
- K with Ⱪ ⱪ, Ḵ ḵ
- Ꞣ and ꞣ were used in Latvian orthography before 1921[6]
- The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet uses various forms of the letter K:[7]
- U+1D0B ᴋ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL K
- U+1D37 ᴷ MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL K
- U+1D4F ᵏ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL K
- ₖ : Subscript small k was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902[8]
- Ʞ ʞ : Turned capital and small k were used in transcriptions of the Dakota language in publications of the American Board of Ethnology in the late 19th century.[9] Turned small k was also used for a velar click in the International Phonetic Alphabet but its use was withdrawn in 1970.
- 𝼐 : Small capital turned k is used as a click letter[10][11]
- 𝼃 : Small letter reversed k is used as a Voice Quality Symbol (VoQS)[12][11]
Ligatures and abbreviations
- ₭ : Lao kip
- Ꝃ ꝃ, Ꝅ ꝅ : Various forms of K were used for medieval scribal abbreviations[13]
Other representations
Computing
Preview | K | k | K | K | k | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER K | LATIN SMALL LETTER K | KELVIN SIGN | FULLWIDTH LATIN CAPITAL LETTER K | FULLWIDTH LATIN SMALL LETTER K | |||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 75 | U+004B | 107 | U+006B | 8490 | U+212A | 65323 | U+FF2B | 65355 | U+FF4B |
UTF-8 | 75 | 4B | 107 | 6B | 226 132 170 | E2 84 AA | 239 188 171 | EF BC AB | 239 189 139 | EF BD 8B |
Numeric character reference | K |
K |
k |
k |
K |
K |
K |
K |
k |
k |
EBCDIC family | 210 | D2 | 146 | 92 | ||||||
ASCII 1 | 75 | 4B | 107 | 6B |
- 1 Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
Other
NATO phonetic
|
Morse code |
Kilo |
Signal flag | Flag semaphore | American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling) | British manual alphabet (BSL fingerspelling )
|
Braille dots-13 Unified English Braille |
References
- ^ "K" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "kay," op. cit.
- ^ "K". The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1977, online(registration required)[dead link]
- S2CID 161870047.
- ISBN 0-19-508345-8. Archivedfrom the original on 2016-11-09. Retrieved 2016-10-18.
- ^ Stephen Phillips (2009-06-04). "International Morse Code". Archived from the original on 2014-02-12. Retrieved 2014-02-10.
- ^ "Latin Extended-D" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-03-25. Retrieved 2019-03-06.
- ^ Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2018-02-19. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
- ^ Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (2009-01-27). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
- ^ Everson, Michael; Jacquerye, Denis; Lilley, Chris (2012-07-26). "L2/12-270: Proposal for the addition of ten Latin characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-03-30. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
- ^ Miller, Kirk; Sands, Bonny (2020-07-10). "L2/20-115R: Unicode request for additional phonetic click letters" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-08. Retrieved 2022-10-12.
- ^ a b Anderson, Deborah (2020-12-07). "L2/21-021: Reference doc numbers for L2/20-266R "Consolidated code chart of proposed phonetic characters" and IPA etc. code point and name changes" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-01-08. Retrieved 2022-10-12.
- ^ Miller, Kirk; Ball, Martin (2020-07-11). "L2/20-116R: Expansion of the extIPA and VoQS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2020-10-24. Retrieved 2022-10-12.
- ^ Everson, Michael; Baker, Peter; Emiliano, António; Grammel, Florian; Haugen, Odd Einar; Luft, Diana; Pedro, Susana; Schumacher, Gerd; Stötzner, Andreas (2006-01-30). "L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2018-09-19. Retrieved 2018-03-24.